On Monday, the same day the GAVI Alliance helped oversee the roll out of a routine pneumococcal vaccine in Kenya, GAVI chairman Dagfinn Hoybraten highlighted the need for greater reductions in vaccine prices in developing countries during an interview with Reuters, the news service reports. The piece examines the funding mechanism in place to finance the pneumococcal vaccines, known as Advance Market Commitment (AMC), as well as the budget shortfall facing the group (Kelland, 2/14).

President Barack Obama “released his budget proposal for fiscal year 2012 on Monday,” the New York Times reports (Calmes, 2/14). The president’s “fiscal 2012 budget allocates $47 billion for the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which reflects only a 1 percent increase over 2010 levels for the core budget,” National Journal writes (Sorcher, 2/14).

“A prominent aid recipient in the 1990s, Russia has quintupled its annual foreign aid budget in the past four years, from $100 million to $500 million, and created a $7.5 billion fund to help struggling neighbours. It is [also] considering setting up a national body to rival the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),” Reuters writes in an article that examines some of the country’s motivations towards greater investment abroad.

“Kenya on Monday became the first African country to introduce a routine vaccine against pneumococcal disease, which claims the lives of more than half a million children under five each year,” Deutsche Presse Agentur/The Hindu reports. The GAVI Alliance, which is supporting the vaccine’s roll out, “is aiming to introduce the vaccine to 19 developing countries – including Nicaragua, Guyana, Yemen and Sierra Leone – within a year and hopes to reach more than 40 nations by 2015, depending on funding.”

House Republican leaders on Friday evening released legislation “designed to fund the rest of the fiscal year, which includes $100 billion in discretionary spending cuts compared with President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget request,” National Journal reports.

Foreign Aid, Antipoverty Advocates, Others Must Back Deficit Commission Report Efforts To Restore Budget Choices “Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a chance to interview some amazing people,” ranging from Bill Gates to scientists and teachers, who are all concerned about impending budget cuts,Â the New York Times’ David Brooks…

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Thursday with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the new House Budget Committee chair, “to set out her objections to the House Republicans’ deficit-cutting plans,” the Financial Times reports. Obama administration officials and congressional Democrats argue that Republican’s proposed budget cuts “will reduce U.S. influence throughout the world … and cost lives in Africa and beyond,” the newspaper writes in a story outlining the different perspectives over how far budget cuts should go.

The Future Of Global Health Journalism:Â This reportÂ for the Kaiser Family Foundation found that shrinking newsroom budgets and the closing of many foreign bureaus are curtailing global health coverage within traditional news media outlets. Advocacy and nongovernmental organizations are increasingly bypassing news outlets and producing their own content, leading to questions…

Data from the World Food Program (WFP) â€“ available ahead of the release of its annual report â€“ shows the cost of feeding people around the world “increased markedly in 2010 as rising grain prices pushed up the cost of staple foods,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

A two-day summit of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, concluded on Wednesday with African leaders calling for stronger “efforts in building capacity that goes beyond achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target of 2015,” the New Times reports.